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Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from
that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through
intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and
tertiaries, in which any second is to be referred to The First,
any third to the second.
Standing before all things, there must exist a Simplex, differing
from all its sequel, self-gathered not inter-blended with the
forms that rise from it, and yet able in some mode of its own to
be present to those others: it must be authentically a unity, not
merely something elaborated into unity and so in reality no more
than unity's counterfeit; it will debar all telling and knowing
except that it may be described as transcending Being- for if
there were nothing outside all alliance and compromise, nothing
authentically one, there would be no Source. Untouched by
multiplicity, it will be wholly self-sufficing, an absolute
First, whereas any not-first demands its earlier, and any
non-simplex needs the simplicities within itself as the very
foundations of its composite existence.
There can be only one such being: if there were another, the two
[as indiscernible] would resolve into one, for we are not dealing
with two corporal entities.
Our One-First is not a body: a body is not simplex and, as a
thing of process cannot be a First, the Source cannot be a thing
of generation: only a principle outside of body, and utterly
untouched by multiplicity, could be The First.
Any unity, then, later than The First must be no longer simplex;
it can be no more than a unity in diversity.
Whence must such a sequent arise?
It must be an offspring of The First; for suppose it the product
of chance, that First ceases to be the Principle of All.
But how does it arise from The First?
If The First is perfect, utterly perfect above all, and is the
beginning of all power, it must be the most powerful of all that
is, and all other powers must act in some partial imitation of
it. Now other beings, coming to perfection, are observed to
generate; they are unable to remain self-closed; they produce:
and this is true not merely of beings endowed with will, but of
growing things where there is no will; even lifeless objects
impart something of themselves, as far as they may; fire warms,
snow chills, drugs have their own outgoing efficacy; all things
to the utmost of their power imitate the Source in some operation
tending to eternity and to service.
How then could the most perfect remain self-set- the First Good,
the Power towards all, how could it grudge or be powerless to
give of itself, and how at that would it still be the Source?
If things other than itself are to exist, things dependent upon
it for their reality, it must produce since there is no other
source. And further this engendering principle must be the very
highest in worth; and its immediate offspring, its secondary,
must be the best of all that follows.
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